Though this song is from a Danish collection, there is another of very similar nature in Unst, Shetland. It begins "Der lived a king into da aste," and it recounts how a certain "wedded wife" was carried off by "the King o' Ferrie." Her husband afterwards goes in search of her; and "one day, in his wandering quest, he sees a company passing along a hillside, and he recognizes among them his lost lady." They go into "a great 'ha'-house,' or castle," which is said to be on the hillside; but as nothing is visible but "a grey stane," after they have entered, it would seem that the hill itself was the castle, and the grey stone the entrance door, as in the case of the Orcadian Maes-how, or many another residence of the "how-folk." This assumption is quite borne out by the song itself. The same writer[181] indicates that such abductions were quite common in Shetland, when she states that a "witch" who married a dwarf returned once to her mother's house, and, while imparting to her various other counsels and warnings, "gave many instructions how to provide against the enchantments used by Trows for the purpose of decoying unsuspecting girls into their unhallowed domain." And her parting injunction was to be sure and have the maidens "weel cöst about" (? protected by charms) "when the grey women-stealers are wandering." But instances of such intercourse between the dwarf races and others, the abduction being by no means confined to one side, could be quoted almost interminably.
The celebrated "how" known as Maes-how, in Orkney, has just been referred to. It is so admirable a specimen of the "Pecht's house" proper that no better selection can be made for a more particular description of such a dwelling. "It stands about a mile to the north-east of the great stone ring of Stennis. Its external appearance is that of a truncated conical mound of earth, about 300 feet in circumference at the base and thirty-six feet high, surrounded by a trench forty feet wide. Nothing was known of its internal structure till the year 1861, when it was opened by Mr. Farrer, M.P., but the common tradition of the country represented it as the abode of a goblin, who was named 'the Hogboy,' though no one knew why."[182] In Lincolnshire, this term "hog-boy" is pronounced as "shag-boy."[183] The word pronounced shag in one place and hog in another, is understood to be the same as haug or how; and the term is therefore a variant of the plural "how-folk." It was one of those "shag-boys" or "hog-boys," then, that local tradition remembered as the inhabitant of Maes-how. And nowhere is the tenacity of the popular memory more strongly illustrated than in this instance. For, during many centuries prior to 1861, this had been nothing more, to the passing stranger, than a grassy hillock, utterly void of any indication that its interior was "hollow," and that the whole structure—stone-built dwelling, and super-imposed earth—was entirely artificial,—the work of a vanished race. And yet, so full of vitality is tradition, that the descendants of those who had seen its inmate or inmates, knew, in spite of the lapse of a thousand years, that this was no ordinary grassy mound, but that once upon a time it had been the habitation of people of a certain race, whose characteristics are even yet remembered, if only in a confused and imperfect manner.
However important and necessary a written description may be, it is very incomplete without a personal inspection of the place described, or in lieu of that, the "counterfeit presentment," which is almost as serviceable. From the view here given of Maes-how, as it appears from the outside, and also from the following diagrams, one obtains an admirable idea of the exterior and interior of a sheean, Fairy Hillock, or Fairy Ha'.
SECTIONAL VIEW AND GROUND-PLAN OF MAES-HOW.
After examining these pictures of this famous "how," one is able to fully understand the traditional accounts of the "hollow hillocks" of the dwarfs. One can fit any of the many stories that tell of visits paid to such "hills" into this particular scene. There is the small, concealed entrance at the base of the hill (at which, or beside which, the visitor used to knock until "the hill opened"—revealing a low, narrow, dark passage.
